What It Means to be a Christian

It may not quite be at the level of Captain America’s vibranium shield, but my skin is a lot thicker than it used to be. When you start a blog that promotes something as insanely unorthodox as the idea that the author of Genesis 1-3 might have (like most other biblical authors) made use of a metaphor here and there, you come to expect that some fundamentalists are going to call Father Merrin and start reaching for the holy water.

It’s unfortunate — and, often, perplexing — but you learn to get used to it.

Even so, there are times I receive emailed messages like the one quoted above, and it hits like a punch in the gut. I know I should just ignore such trollishness. Usually I can. But not always.

Don’t worry, though. This is not a whiny column about how mean the conservatives are to us open-minded, forward-thinking progressives. Instead, it’s about how messages like this are helping me rethink almost everything I thought I knew about the Christian faith.

We evangelicals are partial to the idea that faith is paramount to Christianity. In basic terms, this is a very biblical idea (James 2:24 notwithstanding).

The problem is that “faith” is almost synonymous with the word “beliefs,” which is pretty darn close to the word “doctrine,” which leads to the subconscious (and hence, very powerful) idea that theological purity is the ultimate goal in the life of being a Christian. (Thanks a lot, English language).

I have not been immune to this. At various points in my life, I have found myself bizarrely, irrationally feeling as though the Catholic who prays to the saints, or the Pentecostal who speaks in tongues, are more my enemy than the atheist who thinks we’re all a bunch of crazies that worship fairy tales.

Even as I’ve come to the view that things like the increasingly toxic war over same-sex marriage is more “our” problem than society’s, I have still held onto the idea that theology trumps all. I honestly believed that, if some of these brothers and sisters could simply be persuaded that it really does matter that “sinners” were drawn to Jesus but are repelled by us, then they would change their minds and behavior.

Because of emails like the one above, I’m changing my tune. More and more, I’m seeing that the issue is not doctrine; it’s attitude. It’s not theology; it’s posture. It’s not the brain; it’s the heart. In short, it doesn’t really matter what kind of Christian you are. What it comes down to is what kind of person you are.